


don't you know the kingdom's under siege

by splinters



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Sevilla FC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-23 04:15:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15598071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/splinters/pseuds/splinters
Summary: Go big or go home, Jesús thinks.





	don't you know the kingdom's under siege

Go big or go home, Jesús thinks.

 _Go home_.

 

 

Jesús is self-aware enough to expect nothing, to slip away from Manchester with his three pieces of silver and pride largely in tatters. There is an option to stay—one more year, and plenty of opportunities to play, Guardiola tells him—but he barely pays it any mind. He’s long since overstayed his welcome, he concedes in the end. The rumble and collective groan of the crowd following him around does nothing to convince him otherwise.

 

 

There’s a kid at Sevilla who wants him to go back, to share a dressing-room with him.

He wonders, sometimes, how others really see him. It shouldn’t matter—he knows this, logically, but it’s human nature to care. He wonders, his reflection staring back at himself, thinner in the face than he remembers, why he never grew with the myth and legend around him. Wonders when it surpassed him and became bigger than himself, filled the boots he never could.

He wonders if anyone back in Manchester would believe what he left behind.

“Who am I?” he will ask his reflection.

He is father. A husband. A World Cup winner. He is a religious and private man. He is a footballer. A son of Los Palacios. A sevillista. He is the most successful player in his club’s history. He is a legend to some and a failure to others. He is a good friend. He is humble and hardworking. He is not the sad, anxious little boy everyone still thinks he is, just because it keeps things simple for them.

He is Jesús Navas, and he is going home.

 

 

He doesn’t know how he gets there, but he does, and his son is in his arms.

“Look, Jesusito,” he says, pointing up. “There’s Jiménez and Suker and Biri-Biri and Arza and Campanal.” He walks, warm in the shadow of the Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán. “There’s Pablo Blanco and Palop and Kanouté and—”

 _There’s me_.

 

 

“Ey, you little shit,” is the first thing Nolito says to him, “you better be coming back.”

Jesús’ laughter is nothing more than a stuttered hum.

“I’m working on it.”

“Yeah, you better be,” he says, then, “So, where’ve you been hiding all summer?”

Jesús smiles into the edge of his phone, amused that it’s even a question.

“Where do you think?” he teases. “I’m home.”

 

 

There is a rumour—a prophecy, even, spoken into existence long ago, that he’ll disappear when he retires. Vanish right off the face off the earth. It’s a nice thought, returning to the quiet, comfortable life he once so painfully pried himself away from in pursuit of something that never came as easy as they claimed. He’s always loved football—that’s never been up for debate—but he’s never necessarily fell in love with being a footballer, never quite got the hang of it.

There’s still time, though. He’s not ready to disappear quite yet.

 

 

And then comes the great dilemma: how does one return to a place they once could never leave?

 

 

Before, no one asks him if he wants it.

David takes it, and for that, Jesús is thankful, not quite sure how he ever would’ve told them no. He’s ready for it now, though. After all this time—ten years, he reminds himself, oh how old they would’ve been—he’s ready.

He’s always with him, of course, but recently he’s been thinking about him an awful lot more. Ten years, he thinks. It’s been ten years. He thinks about him walking off that pitch. About _that_ goal. About his singing on the drive to training, too loud for the morning. About him leaning over the seat in front of him on a plane journey home, telling him everything would be fine, and that he’s always going to be there for him. About Sergio sitting beside him, promising the same.

He thinks about him endlessly.

Thinks about his teammate and his friend, that one person who did not admire him for all that he put himself through, but saw him as who he was. That one person who did not see him as a caricature of his every stumble of anxiety or wave of panic, but as someone much more real.

That one person he has carried everywhere, played for everywhere, celebrated everywhere.

The question is a simple one, and the answer even more so.

“Is there anything else?” Castro asks.

Jesús doesn’t even think about it—he’s been thinking about it for a decade.

“I want Antonio’s number.”

 

 

He posts a picture of them both, arms entwined in the Glasgow rain, blissfully unaware that the world was about to cave in. Sometimes he wishes he could go back and live in that moment forever.

Here again, he writes. Another dream complete.

 

 

In the end, it is an infinite fondness that brings him home.

Jesús knows he doesn’t deserve it—to have everything stay the same way until he’s returned to claim it, to continue without penance or purgatory—but it is home, and if there is one place he can still return with impunity, it is here.

Fifteen thousand people await him as he climbs the steps to the pitch, a testament to exactly that.

**Author's Note:**

> the utter mess of this fic is a commentary on sevilla itself. one day i'll write the navas character study fic of my dreams...but not today.


End file.
